Category Archives: year in pictures

outside Target today

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boy with book talking to a homeless man outside Target

I used to be the kind of writer who would take a sight like this and try to connect it to some experience in my own life.  But what would it be with this photo?  That I went to Target to buy a digital TV and decided to save some money by getting the converter box instead, and now I’m $300 further from being homeless like this guy ha ha?  That if that kid’s holding a Bible and talking about what I think he’s talking about, then that’s the kind of thing I’d have wanted to do in high school?  It all sounds kind of dumb, doesn’t it?

Or maybe I could say blah blah the juxtaposition of this and consumerism, or blah blah I’m lucky to have a support system that would help keep me from this fate if I ran out of other options, or blah blah nuts to Christianity but if it helps either one of these people then good for them?

Nah, it’s all dumb.

this isn’t real typing

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I’ve been thinking about how I do more photography than writing these days.  Taking pictures makes me think about things in a writerly fashion, in the same way that breathing used to make me think about things in a writerly fashion.  Sometimes I won’t think about things in a writerly fashion for days, and then I’ll go to caption a photo real quick and get into explaining the photo and all of a sudden I’m writing when I hadn’t intended to.

The difference between writing and not writing has nothing to do with typing or the forming of sentences, I guess.  And the difference isn’t intent, either.  It’s like when I sing things in falsetto I think to myself, “This isn’t my real singing.”  It’s not real writing or real singing unless I say it is, except when I start doing it without thinking and decide it’s real afterwards.

If any of you know of a support group for people who make things more complicated than they need to be, don’t tell me about it because I won’t make the first meeting on account of I’m too busy overthinking.

So here’s what I’m going to do.  Several of my friends are doing those photo-a-day-for-a-year projects, and I’m going to join in. The focus for me, however, will be writing as well as photography.  I’m going to describe the photo or write about why I took the photo or write about whatever the photo made me think of, even if it’s totally unrelated. I may not post every photo here every day (especially on the weekends), but I’ll try to do it most days, and all the photos will be on Flickr.

Here’s the first one:

So I guess we're doing this, then.

This is the frost that was on my car this morning. I usually park in a carport, but yesterday I parked on the street because someone was blocking the driveway.

My car’s really old by car standards-it’s a 1996 Acura Integra named Betty. I’ve driven Betty since 1999, long enough that I can’t get comfortable when driving someone else’s car or a rental. It’s kind of falling apart in places, but it still drives and it still air-conditions, and these are the two important things for a car to do in Texas. The ABS went out a few years ago, but that’s less important in Texas, so Betty and I are still rolling along.

I’ll probably drive it until it falls apart or I do.